"I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance." --Wesley Snipes

Monday, May 24, 2004

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Come closer, Mr. Belz; your sentence
is commuted. Faulkner believed God
was dead, our pursuit of him no
more than "a steeplechase toward nothing,"
a credo hard to follow if you've seen
the Arch all yellowed & pinked, snow
falling carelessly on lonely,
dirty St. Louis (a Coke town, not Pepsi),
no drugs in sight, the haze not hash
smoke but December fog and seven beers.
Hard to believe that God doesn't want
us to listen to Surfer Rosa, or to bounce,
screaming, however briefly into Eisenhower
America. Belz, you prefer Budweiser
to microbrew & Frost to Stevens but I say
it hasn't a thing to do with your children--
it's drizzly in Missouri, the Mississippi
is high & you are beautiful, bloodshot
& high as one can get, short of paying
the eight bucks to ride to the top.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I like this one, Tony. Way to embed a Pixies reference, and your vision of St. Louis makes it vivid. Kind of reminds me of what Harvey Pekar does for Cleveland.

Anonymous said...

yeah, i really like this one too. kinda heart-fucking-breaking

Anonymous said...

how do i always end up anonymous? im me, laurel, and i still dig the poem.

Anthony Robinson said...

Thanks everyone. I'm feeling very poety this week.